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August 7, 2012

Cabbages are good for coleslaw, sauerkraut and borscht.

Kings are best seen and not heard.

I haven’t written anything in awhile, nor have I been commenting or tweeting. The reason is, I’ve been in a pretty bad headspace over the past month or so. This is a part of my life as a person with Depression and PTSD. It gets pretty bad sometimes and it takes everything I have to not step out of this Universe into the next one. But there’s usually something that comes along which lifts me out of that Abyss, so I do what I can to hold on until that thing to happens. This time, it was Her Poutineness, Ener Hax, and her post http://iliveisl.com/proof-that-canada-rocks-or-likes-beer/. Thanks Ener.

But despite where my head was at, I have kept up with things. Reading the blogs, the tweets, the various e-zines and forums, so I know there’s been a few things of note happening in the Metaverse lately. So, here I go with my own views on those.

I read Maria Korolov’s recent article in HyperGrid Business about Linda Kellie joining SpotOn3D and I have to agree with Maria, this is a PR coup for them. After all, Linda is well known as a content creator and generous contributor to the OpenSim community and has some stature in our community as a result. And they did take advantage of it, with a posting on their blog about it.

Let me pull a quote from their blog that I find a little troubling, though. “While she intends to continue making free items for her Website, Linda is impressed with the security for intellectual property offered by the SpotON3D platform… “. This seems at odds with her own past statements that she doesn’t care about copyright or patent licenses. After all, those licenses are what gives us protections for our intellectual properties as well as providing remedies when those licenses are violated. Its not the best system and its seriously flawed, but it is what we have and the fight goes on to change it.

Something dismayed me, though, are her comments regarding many people’s positions about SO3D. According to Linda, we’re all trolls and idiots for not supporting SO3D. Yes, I take that personally. I’m one of those people. But, just because I don’t support SO3D doesn’t make me a troll. A troll will never explain the reasons for their disagreement. I do. Nor am I an idiot. I made a decision based on the information I was able to gather and I have stuck by that decision. Furthermore, show me an error in my logic or a bit of information I have wrong and I will change my mind. That makes me principled, not idiotic.

To date, nobody has shown me to be wrong about SpotOn3D. That is because we’re all waiting to see if SO3D gets their five patent applications approved. And what they will do after that. From their own blog at http://spoton3d.blogspot.ca/2011/08/official-statement-from-spoton3ds-ceo.html - “If a patent is granted on the plugin, Spoton3D will enforce its IP rights“. Since the CEO and primary investor in SO3D is a patent lawyer, we can all be sure that they will carry out this threat. I also will put forth that, if SO3D does get the patents approved and does pursue any court actions, let us all be ready to help with contributions to a defense fund. Lack of money for the court costs is the biggest and most powerful weapon that can be used against our community.

Each and every one of us will make up our own minds when it comes to SO3D, but here’s a few things to keep in mind while you deliberate. SO3D has stated that their “goal from the very beginning has been to improve the metaverse” ( http://spoton3d.blogspot.de/2011_08_01_archive.html ). SpotOn3D’s server software is a fork of OpenSim. Any fixes that they have made to the code they have never contributed back to the development of OpenSim. Their viewer is based on one of the TPVs. Any fixes to any bugs in the viewer code they made they have never contributed back. Furthermore, they do not make the source code for their viewer public, which I think violates the GNU license of TPV viewers. How do these actions “improve the metaverse”?

And speaking of licenses, it looks like Linden Lab has been pwned by Havok. LL will be disabling the ability to use its viewer, and its approved Third Party Viewers, to connect to OpenSim grids so as to comply with the Havok license. This means that viewer developers will have three options. Go SecondLife only, go OpenSim/AuroraSim only or split in two and do both, which is what the Phoenix/Firestorm team are doing. For me, it means some major changes coming to the MIV over the next couple of months as developers make their choices. I have already decided that I will not list SL only viewers.

To be honest, I see this as a good thing for us. Many have said that we need viewers that can take advantage of OpenSim’s distinct features without having to remain compliant to Second Life. Yes, if you are present in both OpenSim and SL you will have to use two different viewers, but look on the bright side. You won’t get your grid caches messed up as often. And there’s an advantage for the viewer devs, too, though it means a lot of hard work. Build a new viewer from scratch, in C# and licensed to ditch that six month development delay that LL stuck you with. Think on that, viewers developed with the same coding language in synch with OpenSim and AuroraSim by both server and viewer developers working and communicating together.

The apron strings are being cut. The Metaverse will continue to grow. Second Life will continue to have a place in it, but it won’t be as big and profitable as Linden Lab would like. SL is suffering the death of a thousand cuts as people leave and regions disappear. Its only a trickle, but that only means that it will take a long time. I doubt that Second Life will ever shut down, but it will end up losing the distinction of being the biggest.

One final thought. This opens up a vast opportunity for some good-hearted fun. Let Linden Lab make “war” on us. There’s not much they can do, especially if we fight back with laughter and comedy. We can open refugee centres on OSGrid and drop care packages of quality freebies into SL. We can make over-the-top machinima vids giving instructions on how to slip across the borders to freedom. We can infiltrate and start a resistance movement of “freedom fighters”. We can PhotoShop recruitment posters and “warbonds” (Uncle Sarge wants YOU!!)

Well put Sarge. I think you sum up the current state of affairs with SO3D and Linda Kellie very well. I tend to be a bit more brash and call the kettle black in no uncertain terms. I don't suffer hypocrisy gladly but, hell, that is my way. I don't hate anyone and I still give credit where it is due. I am also willing of listening to reasoned argument and there has been plenty of that from your good self and others like Ilan of Kitely.

There can be no forgiveness for SO3D while they take from our community and hog it under their belt giving nothing back but threats of court action over patents I absolutely don't think they deserve or should be granted. They are the worst kind of Second Life wannabe because, where others at least can justify their closed status to protect content, SO3D has gone a lot further and is attempting to entice everyone under their umbrella in a SO3D Metaverse no less, and, what they can't achieve by persuasion they appear to be attempting by legal devices that bring about and promote monopolies.

We are already in the grip of the monopoly, SDecond Life and their increasingly aggressive stand against the open Metaverse. We have so many6 enemies trying to close the open Metaverse down or severely restrict it's operation. There is SL from without and SO3D from within all chipping away at our freedom. And they do it all for a crack at the big buck.

I like your ideas for approaching the Linden war in the spirit of good hearted fun but, seriously, anything that raises awareness of the problems and issues we face, not to mention the promotional effect for the open Metaverse in general, has to be a good thing. Count me in and I would be willing to provide a refugee sim in OSgrid and a plot for a center in Second Life.

But I disagree that we are "in the grip of the monopoly". Rather, we are shackled by a legacy of poor code implementation and licensing brought about by shabby corporate policies. Removing the ability to use SL-only viewers from logging in to OpenSim and AuroraSim grids actually frees our community from those shackles.

And this goes even further. This new policy of LL's actually presents us with a golden opportunity to dispel the myopic view that SecondLife is the metaverse. For anyone to make such a claim is a person who is as blinkered as an ass pulling a load of male bovine fecal matter.

We will now be able to develop viewers that truly test and expand the limits of the Metaverse. Viewers that people actually like to use. As that happens, more people will talk about us, which means that more people will give OpenSim and AuroraSim a try. And some of those will stay. The absolute best thing to do is just what we are doing, implementing quality developments and features that people want and having fun doing so.

As for SpotOn3D, well, time will tell. My thought is that the best thing they can do, if the patent is granted, is to make it openly available. But lawyers don't think like that so I am sure that such a thing will not happen. In the meantime, I am watching for any publication of their patent applications. Once that happens, we can take our own actions to show that those applications should not be approved.

Yeah, you're right. Not my best choice of words to say we are in the grip of a monopoly. Better if I said we have had our fill of monopolies. And I do agree that Opensim now has to opportunity to move forward with its own viewer and show what it is really made of.

It isn't the programming language mismatch which has been a barrier to collaboration so much as it has been a mismatch in licenses. The LL viewer codebase is under a GPL license, which means ANY derivative must also be under a GPL license. Opensim is under the non-viral BSD license, which allows developers to use it for commercial products if they so choose. Because of this mismatch, there's been a lot of reluctance and even fear on the part of both parties to collaborate for fear of being legally nuked from orbit by LL for violating the GPL license.

C++ (the language pretty much every high performance game engine is written in, so it is the LL viewer) and C# are close enough syntactically that it won't be much of a problem for programmers to collaborate. The key is making a viewer which is also under a BSD (or even MIT) license, allowing developers to feel free *to* collaborate.

Yes, the licensing has been the biggest problem. And that is the primary reason that I propose a start-from-scratch viewer. Keep it open source so that LL can view it and determine that it does not use their coding. At the same time, place it under a non-commercial license to maintain the free-to-use-and-modify as current viewers are now. And it would allow for some great collaboration to occur, from which we all would benefit.

As for the programming language, I would like to see C# used so that I can compile it the way I do with OpenSim and AuroraSim. I just can't seem to get C++ to compile properly and I like to try out current versions rather than wait for binaries to be released.

The problem with C# as a viewer language is that it is not designed to handle the kind of bleeding-edge computation and data processing that 3D heavy applications require. The reason pretty much every high performance graphics and physics library is written in C or C++ is because they are optimized for that kind of computational abuse. C#, like Java, is designed for pretty good performance that's portable everywhere which makes it ideal for the server.

You could build a viewer in C#, but it would be slower, and it would lock out a lot of the preexisting game engine technology that's already been done in C++, not to mention the developer community attached to that tech.

No worries about the self-promoting. I read your post when you first published it and bookmarked the Urho3d site with the intent of downloading it and checking it out for myself. I've simply not done so yet, still catching up on things that I've neglected lately.

Forget copyright, patents, etc cos they only apply in the country the person is IN or the country the VW's servers are IN. Whats the likelihood of SO3D coming here to attempt to use this countries legal system to prosecute me if I breach some SO3D copyright etc? Or LL coming here cos I breached a part of their ToS?
It could cost them thousands to get here and commence the legal proceedings and what if they lose the case? Then it could also cost them thousands to pay 'my' legal fees.
Each has the legal jargon in their ToS saying they'll close your account, ban you, and keep whatever monies you had there.

When you create something and upload it to the internet, its PD unless you set any sort of restrictions on it's being copied. When you upload say an image you created on your computer to SL, it becomes a 'texture' and SL ToS says you retain its copyright but if you set it as FP (FP=PD), then only it's creator can download it… How so? Another part of SL ToS states that as soon as you upload a file to it's servers, copyright transfers to THEM!

Linda Kellie (as much as she MAY have helped others with her 'free to download etc' items on her website) is merely propagating something that SL has been trying to stop for years - copybotting. Download all those 'freebies' on her website then upload/import them to whichever VW you want then investigate each then ask yourself why some 'components' don't have her name as its creator!

When I joined SL Linda Kellie was a 'who?' but after finding about a sim there called MIA I found out.
In June 2010 I went to IW and 3 months later so did Linda Kellie who bought 2 sims offering freebies… Then (I think) sometime early 2011 she had to quit IW due to RL 'stuff'.
Then suddenly there's this website which offered freebies for VW's. Her website.

Well, when it comes to the jurisdiction of the copyright/patent license, there's all sorts of things that can be done, such as extradition. The Richard Dwyer case comes to mind. He's a UK citizen who owned and operated TVShack.net. It was all perfectly legal in the UK, yet US media moguls have got the US Justice Department involved and they are trying to extradite him to the US to face criminal charges. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_O%27Dwyer] And then there's the fact that lawyers are a friendly bunch (maybe its the inbreeding). I am pretty sure that the patent lawyer who owns SO3D can get some friendly lawyers in your country to take up the case, especially if they get a cut of any possible awards. Actually, the biggest threat from SO3D is the threat itself. How many people want to create a browser plugin and won't for fear of being sued? That is why I would like people to be ready to setup a defense fund. If we do that then the threat of expensive, bankrupting litigation is greatly reduced.

As for the source of Linda's stuff, well, I've certainly not seen or heard anything to lead me to believe its not hers by right. And you know that if it was copybotted there'd be a pretty big outcry about it. Here's something to consider, though. I have similar health issues so I do know she has a lot of time available to create such things. I can make a building similar to any of her shops in less than half an hour. And I am at my computer an average of 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. Seems to me that an averagely talented person can produce a lot in 70 hours per week. And learn how to use things like Blender properly. With all the tutorials available, its not difficult to learn. So, with Blender, inworld building and a lot of time on your hands, a person can certainly produce a wide variety of a lot of things.

Sometimes a prolific, creative and generous person is simply prolific, creative and generous. I certainly can't produce animations and scultpies, but that's only due to my lack of learning how to use Blender. I've used my time to create whole sims, like Excelsior Station. 57,000+ prims on a land mass the size of 16regions. Then there's Port Conor on Kitely, 1,800+ prims. My HG destination, Misfit's Folly is 2 regions with 3,000+prims. And then there's my offline WorkShop, 28 regions with I have no idea how many prims. And all those with their scripts, animations and sounds. Sheesh, no wonder I haven't time to learn Blender :-)

Does it sound like I am defending her? Yes. Just because I don't like how she describes us, and me by extension, doesn't mean I don't recognize what she does bring to the community. Provide evidence to the contrary and I will change my mind. But, until then, I'm not going to be crying Fire! where there's no smoke.